


amhrán na farraige

by anpm



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Canonical Character Death, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, F/F, F/M, Fae & Fairies, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-19 12:21:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11897631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anpm/pseuds/anpm
Summary: There's one thing Neil's mother has always told him: Never go near the water. It's too dangerous.Now that she's gone, Neil can't help but do the one thing she told him never to do.a celtic mythology AU





	1. First

**Author's Note:**

> hey y'all. we're back at it again. this is the thing i was excited about that i talked about in my previous fic. just a heads up: it's definitely not going to be as long as the other thing, and the chapters aren't going to be as long. it just really got in my head and i got excited to write it out. i'll be playing with ~celtic mythology, so yes, this is a faerie universe i guess? haha. this also has a different sport at the heart of it. swimming! don't worry though, this fic won't be focused on swimming very much. i don't want to write about that and i don't really want to research it as in-depth as i feel like i would need to in order to write comfortably about it. 
> 
> anyway, i hope you enjoy this. i'm sure you can guess right away what neil is even if i don't say it. i haven't decided if other foxes are going to be magical or not, but some people definitely will be. thanks!

The moon is full and bright in the sky, hanging low and illuminating the road. Nathaniel swerves around a lump of something in the lane, cursing. He doesn’t have the headlights on, didn’t want to risk it. The moonlight is enough for him to see by. He glances to the side and bites back a soft noise when he sees his mom slumped against her seat, blood seeping from the wound in her stomach.

“Turn here,” Mary says. “I can smell it.”

Nathaniel is trying not to visibly panic as he takes the exit she indicated, but he can’t help it. They’ve been driving for hours, switching out only when Mary could no longer concentrate on driving because of her bloodloss. The whole car smells hot and damp with copper and Nathaniel has to stop himself from gagging on it. He’s bleeding from his own small wounds, but they’re easy enough to ignore in the face of his mother’s.

Her breathing gets shallower. “After I’m gone, you need to burn everything. Go to our third location.”

She’s talking like she’s going to die. They both know it’s true, but Nathaniel’s been trying not to think in those words as he drives. He doesn’t know what to do without his mom, doesn’t know how he can continue to run, continue to hide. There’s no way; without Mary, he’s more vulnerable than ever before.

“You’ll get better once we get there, right?” he asks desperately. “You’ll heal. You always said that that’s how you healed, before.”

“If I had my skin, maybe. But not now. Not without it.” She takes in a breath that rattles in her chest. “Turn here. Park as close as you can.” Her voice is weak and wispy.

Nathaniel doesn’t know if it’s legal to drive on the beach, but there’s no one around to stop him. The beat-up old sedan they hotwired somewhere in Sacramento doesn’t seem to want to drive along the sand, but Nathaniel pushes it. He parks a few yards away from the surf crashing against the sand.

Through the cracked windows, Nathaniel can smell the salt of the ocean. He hasn’t been near the sea in years, not since he was young and they still lived with—

The sight of the ocean, sprawling and dark and moving, makes something in his stomach clench with longing. It’s so open, its song is so soft and inviting. It’s not _his_ ocean, isn’t the one he was born to, but it still calls to him and sounds like home.

Hot tears spill down his cheeks before he can control himself. “I’ll be okay, right? Mom, it’ll be okay.”

Mary shifts, her body unsticking painfully from the seat. He can’t help but look at her. She reaches out and cups his cheek. Her hand is hot and sticky with her own blood. She wipes her thumb over his cheek, smearing his tears and her blood together. There’s no smile on her face, but Nathaniel is used to that. Mary Hatford hasn’t smiled in a very long time.

“Remember what I told you,” she says. She drops her hand only when Nathaniel nods.

She gets out of the car and starts to walk towards the ocean. A few feet out, she slips on the sand. Nathaniel jumps out of the car automatically, ready to help steady her. She barks at him to stop and his body freezes.

“You can’t,” she tells him. Her back is to him; she can’t seem to look away from the crashing waves. “Don’t go in the water. It’s dangerous.”

Nathaniel can’t help but follow after her as she continues on. He stops before the water can lap at his shoes and watches his mom go into the ocean. Her head is up and her eyes are focused, even though he knows how much pain she must be in. There’s a serene look on her face that Nathaniel has never seen before—like she knows exactly what she’s doing and has accepted it. She keeps walking, feet steady, until the water is up to her chest. A wave swells up above her and she sinks beneath the water. 

Nathaniel doesn’t see his mother again.

-

He gets his duffle bag out of the car and then burns it the way Mary told him to. Nathaniel watches as the flames lick up the blood staining the vinyl. It smells horrible and he steps away only when the car really goes all the way up.

Unable to do anything else, Nathaniel sits down on a sand dune away from the burning car and watches the tide come in under the moonlight. His whole body cries out for him to follow his mom, to go into the sea, but he can’t move. All he can do is watch until the sun’s fingers start to touch the horizon.

-

Neil surfaces from the water with a gasp. The chlorine stings his throat when he swallows what’s in his mouth. He heaves himself out of the pool and swipes off his swim cap and goggles, tossing them into the box next to the ledge. There’s a towel that he left on the next block and he uses it to wipe down his chest and legs. The lycra of his jammer is cutting into his thighs. He’s been in them too long, but he’d wanted some time to himself after the meet to swim. Now that everyone is gone, Neil walks to the locker room, towel slung over his shoulders.

The harsh voice of his mother follows him as he walks along the length of the pool. He shouldn’t be swimming, of course. He shouldn’t be anywhere _near_ a pool. When they planned to come to Millport, it was because the small town was in the middle of the desert, as far from the ocean as either of them could stand to be. No one would be looking for him there.

But Neil couldn’t help it; he’s always been drawn to the water, of course. He’s always wanted to swim, but his mom always kept him away from any body of water bigger than a bath tub if she could help it. Warned him that thinking about it, wanting it, would only lead to disaster for the both of them.

Now that he is alone—and the thought still stung, so he tended to shy away from it, from the knowledge that he truly was _alone_ , that his mom was _gone_ for good—he can’t stop himself from swimming. He’d hesitantly agreed to join the team when Coach Hernandez approached him about it near the beginning of the year.

Naturally, Neil was great at swimming. He helped the Dingos get two meets away from the finals, when they’d never gotten so close before in the history of the team’s existence. Hernandez had put him in freestyle for both solo races and relay and Neil excelled in the water.

Losing tonight’s meet had spelled the end of the season for the Dingos, but Neil isn’t disappointed. He’s glad he got to swim for his last year of high school, that he got to experience it for once in his lifetime. That he knows he’s _good_ at it, despite all of Mary’s dire warnings.

It would be hard, not being able to swim every day after he graduated and made his way from Millport to some other identity, but Neil is used to things being hard. Hernandez had already agreed that Neil could use the pool after practices until the end of the school year, so at least there was that. Neil had a suspicion that Hernandez knew Neil slept in the locker room a few nights a week, but neither of them mentioned it.

Neil pushes his way into the locker room and stops dead in his tracks when he sees a middle-aged man sitting on the bench, seemingly waiting for him. His eyes flick to the side where Hernandez is standing a bit awkwardly.

“Neil,” Hernandez says before Neil can hightail it back the way he came. “This is Coach David Wymack. He wanted to talk to you about recruiting you for his University.”

Wymack stands up and holds his hand out, not seeming to mind when Neil soundly ignores it. “Hi, Neil. Coach Hernandez has told me a lot about you. I thought I’d come out here and talk to you a little bit after I introduced myself.”

“I know who you are,” Neil says quickly, unable to look away from the man. Once he was able to look past his surprise, he recognized him from various press conferences and online articles Neil still tends to obsess over. “You’re the coach for the Palmetto State Foxes.” Neil’s tone tells them all exactly how he feels about the Foxes.

They’re the worst ranked University in terms of swimmer placements in the national and international circuit. They have never produced an athlete who could place above top five after qualifications, and they generally don’t even get that far. They’re the joke of the collegiate swimming world—everyone knows David Wymack recruits his Foxes not for their ability to swim, but because no one else would have them.

The worst part about the Foxes is who they’ve recently managed to snatch up. Neil’s eyes widen when he realizes what Coach Wymack being in Millport means.

“Tell me he’s not here,” he whispers, horror dawning.

Wymack’s brows go up. “Who?”

“Have you got him to sign yet? This is taking too long.” 

Kevin Day. It’s actually Kevin Day, standing four feet away, scowling at the three of them like they’ve all personally offended him. Neil can practically _see_ the magic coming off of him. His mother’s voice whispers _Undine_ ; even if he is only a Halfling, the taste of the sea coming off of him is unmistakable. He’s tall and imposing, built like most professional swimmers, with a stark black 2 tattooed on his left cheek. Neil remembers watching a video from the last World Aquatics Championships and seeing him glide through the water like he was born to it. He was, technically speaking.

When Kevin looks at him, Neil freezes, throat constricting in fear. If Kevin sees him, _knows_ him, he’ll ruin Neil’s cover, will put him in danger. There’s no way Neil can—

“Josten, right? Well? What are you waiting for?” Kevin demands. There is absolutely no recognition on his face.

The instant feeling of relief makes Neil’s body feel weightless. Kevin doesn’t recognize him. It makes sense, they’d only seen each other the one time, and Neil had looked different, back then. Kevin doesn’t seem to realize what Neil is, either, which is even better.

“I’m not interested,” Neil says quickly. 

“You haven’t even heard my offer,” Wymack tells him. He takes a step forward so he’s at Kevin’s side and Neil has to make himself not make a single movement to run, even though Wymack is the same age and roughly the same shape as his father. “I’ve talked to Hernandez. You don’t have any other scholarship offers to continue swimming, and Kevin said you’re a good investment.” The compliment rings true, somehow.

Neil immediately looks at the other swimmer, even though he shouldn’t. He should just grab his duffle bag and _go_. His suit is still pinching too tightly and he feels uncomfortable half-naked in front of these people that’s he’s read about and watched on his computer. Now they’re all looking at him like they expect something from him. It’s an awful feeling.

“Like I said,” Neil tells his locker as he reaches for a shirt to pull on quickly. His duffle goes over one arm. “I’m not interested.”

“Neil,” Hernandez hisses. “You need to hear them out. Don’t be rude. This is your best chance to swim professionally and we both know it.”

“Coach, a moment, if you will,” Wymack says. The two men walk off towards Hernandez’s office, talking to each other quietly. It leaves Neil alone with Kevin.

Kevin crosses his arms over his chest and looks at Neil, utterly unimpressed. “We’re not leaving until you sign the contract,” he says. There’s absolutely no give in his voice.

“Welcome to Millport, then,” Neil says, snide in his fear. “Hope you have a fantastic stay.” He turns and bolts towards the exit, ignoring Kevin’s shout to stop behind him. 

He has to get out of Millport, has to go to the house he’s been squatting in and erase all evidence of himself, skip out of town. It means he’ll miss graduation, and that’s annoying, but Neil can get a forged diploma if he needs. He’ll have to stop at another of his mom’s stashes, but that’s not a problem, he has to leave anyway. He has to—

It’s like he slams into a brick wall then. Neil curls around his bruised stomach, gasping for breath, and glares up from the floor he crashed to at the young man staring down at him blankly. Neil recognizes that face, recognizes the power behind the fist that was just in his gut. Andrew Minyard.

“Looks like the rabbit was trying to hop away,” Andrew says blandly.

Kevin follows after Neil at a quick pace. “You didn’t have to hit him,” he reprimands. He doesn’t chastise Andrew for stopping Neil, though.

“Fuck, Minyard, this is why we can’t have nice things!” There’s Wymack taking up the rear, Hernandez hovering over his shoulder and looking horrified at the sight of Neil sprawled at Andrew’s feet.

“I thought you didn’t want him to get away.” Andrew takes a few steps back and leans against the wall, but his eyes don’t leave Neil’s. There’s something assessing in his gaze and Neil shivers under it even as he tries to pull himself together.

“Neil—” Hernandez starts.

Neil cuts him off with a shake of the head. He gets up and holds his bag tighter to his chest. It’s got everything important to him in the world; his binder with his mom’s contacts and coded money locations, his belongings, his…

“I’m not interested,” he says again, voice far more winded than before. He tries to make it sound forceful, final.

Wymack holds an envelope out to Neil, shakes it until he finally grabs it. “You keep saying that, but I know you, know your type. I’ve seen you in the videos Hernandez sent over. Your file says you’ve been swimming for just a year, but you swim like you were born for it. If he hadn’t sent the videos, I wouldn’t have given you a second thought. There’s desperation in every stroke. That’s the kind of swimmer I’m looking for.”

“I know what kind of swimmer you’re looking for,” Neil says back. “I’m not some abused kid who needs a place to hide. I don’t need you.”

The Coaches both share a look that tells Neil they don’t believe him. He knows Hernandez has always had his suspicions about Neil’s family situation, has never really bought Neil’s excuses about them being out of town when he brings it up, but he’s never flat out said he doesn’t believe Neil. 

Neil really doesn’t need this right now. He’s out of sorts from seeing Kevin and he can feel himself starting to lose the fine grip he has on his panic. “I’m out of here.”

“You’ll never be anything if you step out of that door,” Kevin tells him fiercely. His eyes are narrowed and he takes a step closer than he was before. “If you leave, you’re nothing to the world. Just some high school nobody who swam a few good times. No one will give a shit about you.” He pauses and searches Neil’s face. “If you come with us, you’ll be something fantastic. I’ll make you something brilliant.”

Neil’s heart clenches at Kevin’s words. He knows he’s nothing, that he’s no one to anyone. He doesn’t matter in this world; that’s been made abundantly clear throughout his life. More than anything, Neil wants what Kevin is offering—a place to swim and the freedom to do it as much as he wants. 

But he’s not supposed to have that. He’s not supposed to be talking to Kevin Day of all people about going to fucking college and swimming with a team full of losers who can’t even get a bronze between the lot of them. There’s no point in having hope for a future where Neil can stand at Kevin Day’s side, can swim in a lane next to him and maybe come out on top. Neil knows what good hope does. It leaves you alone and watching a car burn as your mother’s body returns to the sea.

They’re all looking at him expectantly. Neil clenches the envelope in his fingers, crushing it slightly.

“I’ll think about it,” he says finally.

Triumph spreads across Kevin’s face like he’s already won. Maybe he has.

Neil flees before anyone can say anything else.

-

Against his better judgement—and his mother’s voice screaming in his head not to be an idiot, not to do something so stupid that will just get him killed—Neil signs his fake name on the highlighted spot on the contract that night. He’ll take it to Hernandez to fax over in the morning, much to the Coach’s delight, he’s sure.

It’s stupid. His mom’s voice is right. Doing this will probably get him found, get him killed, but Neil…

He’s so tired of running. He just wants something real, for as long as he can hold it in his hands. Maybe this will get him killed. But it’s a risk Neil is willing to take for the sake of being in the water.

Hope doesn’t make sense for people like Neil. He knows what’s written for him at the end of his story. It’s nothing good, nothing peaceful or happy. But maybe, before that end comes for him, he can have this one good thing. He can be real for one bright moment before he’s snuffed out.

Neil goes to sleep wrapped around his duffle. He dreams of wide open seas.


	2. Second

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andrew ponders inhuman threats.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey sorry this took so long. i got HELLA sick! haha. anyway, i hope you enjoy this chapter! it's a lot of backstory because that's easy and fun to write. i really enjoy world-building, in case you couldn't tell. our good good boys will have some fun next chapter.
> 
> (btw, this probably won't follow the timeline at all. i literally just did that, and it's too boring. there will be confrontations with the main players, obvs, but there won't be the route formula, so i hope you aren't too disappointed!)

Andrew spends the six-hour flight from Arizona gritting his teeth and refusing to look out the window even though he has the closest seat. He knows it annoys Kevin, because Kevin keeps trying to reach around him to get the window up and Andrew keeps jabbing him in the stomach with his elbow to keep him away. After the last attempt, Kevin just huffs and tries to lean over the aisle to talk to Wymack in the next row.

There is nothing Andrew wants to be doing less than flying, right now, but Kevin insisted he went with Wymack to recruit this Josten kid. He’d had a feeling Josten would prove tricky to sign if Kevin didn’t come as well, and Wymack had learned to listen when Kevin had those sorts of _feelings_. He’d been right about their prospective freshmen not being able to last the final semester of high school without having a breakdown. He’d been right about Neil Josten wanting to bolt upon setting eyes on the three of them.

All of that was bullshit, of course. Andrew knew exactly what sort of feelings they were. Magic or precognition or some shit. Some non-human instinct that told Kevin things other people wouldn’t know. Couldn’t know. 

It hadn’t really taken very long for Andrew to figure out Kevin’s—and by extension, the entire fae world’s, really—secret. Kevin was not subtle and he was _not_ good at lying whatsoever. Renee had been a harder stone to turn, her ancestry hidden among her other bloody secrets. But Kevin was easy to spot from a mile away. It didn’t help that, although he’d grown up told he had to keep his bloodline secret, Kevin didn’t see the harm in telling people what he could do.

Somehow, he’d never had the bluntness beaten out of him at Evermore. Andrew really had no clue how.

“You’re some sort of…sensitive, I guess,” Kevin had said one day after practice. Andrew had no clue what had brought it up; they hadn’t been speaking of fae or Andrew’s innate ability to pick them out. 

“Some humans are, you know. My mom told me about them. They tend to crop up in bloodlines. Or maybe you have a drop of fae blood in you?” He hummed to himself as he thought. “But then Aaron would be sensitive, wouldn’t he? And he’s about as oblivious as any other human usually is.” 

Andrew didn’t mention how oblivious Kevin was. He probably wouldn’t appreciate it and while Andrew didn’t care about Kevin’s feelings, hearing his bitching for hours on end was endlessly annoying.

He has his own suspicions as to why he could tell when someone was just…off. A lifetime of being forced to be aware and on the lookout every second of every day left very little secret from Andrew. It was easy to see the people who weren’t used to being humans and didn’t quite know how to blend in all the way if you were always looking for any behavior that was out of the ordinary.

Which is why Andrew is glad they’re leaving Arizona and Neil Josten behind. The kid was off. Maybe not in the same way that Kevin is off, or the few other fae Andrew has run across in his life, but there’s something not right about him. There’s something wrong about Josten, something that sets Andrew’s teeth on edge; even more than the flight home does.

Andrew just wants Neil to stay away. The Foxes are fine as they are; they don’t need another subpar teammate who sets Andrew off more than they do already. That on-edge sensation is the only thing Andrew feels anymore, and he’s sure most people would _want_ it, but Andrew despises it. Between the numbness and the prickle of wrong, Andrew will take being numb any day.

That was his life post-medication. Kevin had taken one look at him high out of his fucking mind on his meds after a meet and said, “This just won’t _do_ ,” and done something that made Andrew’s blood roar. It was like detoxing and withdrawal and rehab all smashed together in under five minutes. It had left Andrew on his knees, heaving and panting and suddenly not manic for the first time in over a year.

After that, Kevin wasn’t really able to keep his secret from the rest of the team, either. Wymack was furious with Kevin, yelling at him about how dangerous it was to pull a stunt like that, people could see and find out what he was—confirming to Andrew’s hazy mind that Wymack had known all about Kevin’s otherness when he allowed him on the team—but Kevin wouldn’t budge.

“He’s a lousy swimmer on the drugs. His concentration is shot for shit. How do they expect him to perform when he can’t make himself focus on the laps?” He’d stood there, toe-to-toe with Wymack, one arm still in a cast bound to his chest. He was, ostensibly, an assistant coach to the Foxes while he healed, but he’d ignored the rest of the team to focus on Andrew for some reason. Kevin was a stubborn shit, and he didn’t ask for permission or forgiveness. 

It was one of the things Andrew absolutely despised about him.

He’d explained to the team what he was, then explained what an Undine could do. He could swim faster than most Olympians when he wasn’t bleeding magic from his very soul and when his body wasn’t broken and useless. He’d been taught how to rely on his human strength instead of his Undine powers, but he could still spend an unnervingly long time under the water before he remembered he had to breathe like the rest of them.

His mom Kayleigh had been full-blooded, while Kevin was only a half-blood, and she’d claimed the Irish Sea as her domain for hundreds of years before deciding to make her way among humanity and find out what all the fuss was about. She’d heard from the mermaids and selkies that humanity was amusing but dangerous, and curiosity had gotten the better of her. Much like the Undine of lore, she’d found a human to have a child with, which gave her a human soul and seven years to live.

She’d told Kevin she hadn’t regretted having him—she loved the part of humanity she got to see, and she loved _him_ and she would never regret that. If she had to die to have him, so be it. She wouldn’t trade him for an eternity at sea. When she died, she told him, she would go to Tír na nÓg and await him there for as long as it took. Andrew sometimes caught Kevin watching YouTube videos of the Irish Sea with a wistful look on his face.

It was just another tragic story in a team full of them, even if Kevin’s had a bit of the otherworldliness to his. His wasn’t a unique sense of loss.

His story hadn’t stopped there, of course. Kayleigh had stupidly thought her good friend Tetsuji Moriyama was just one of those few humans who were sensitive to the fae, that he would be the best person to help raise her child after she died. She had no clue that Tetsuji wasn’t just _curious_ about fae and other supernatural creatures—he and his family had been capturing and extorting them and destroying them for centuries. Old monster hunters from Japan, the Moriyamas were, but they’d found a more profitable way to get rid of those same monsters in the modern era.

They were the reason Kevin was so ignorant of the world and frightened of his own shadow most of the time and Andrew hated them, when he could actually make himself hate.

Gordon had called Kevin a fucking cheater when the team was told what Kevin actually was—after the disbelief and demands for proof, of course.

“How the fuck are we supposed to compete with him if he’s a fucking fish or some shit!” Gordon had cursed. “Who’s to say he’s not making the water slow us down or something?”

“I’m not a _fish_ ,” Kevin said indignantly.

“If Kevin is cheating to be the best, then how is Riko so good?” Nicky asked with a snide tone in his voice. The silence from the rest of the team proved his point. Or so he thought.

None of them knew the rest of Kevin’s little secret. The part that pertained specifically to Riko and how he was able to beat a fucking _water spirit_ in a pool, even with the chlorination slowing Kevin down the slightest bit.

The Moriyamas had figured out a way to take the magic from fae and other supernatural creatures, to use it for themselves. So Tetsuji had schemed and waited and played Kayleigh into his hands, taking her half-Undine son after she died, and using him to make Riko a better athlete. He’d had natural talent for the sport, or so Kevin insisted every time he told the story, but there was no mortal who could beat a water fae in its natural element, half-blood or not.

So Kevin had spent the majority of his life in Evermore, always second best to Riko because of whatever it was the Moriyamas did to steal his magic. Andrew didn’t know exactly what it was—Kevin could never bring himself to actually say. He just knew it was enough to keep Kevin in his place and always that much more behind Riko.

It’d changed, a bit, when the Moriyamas picked up Jean. Jean was something Kevin would never admit to. Another water spirit of some sort. His magic was enough for Riko to drain and use, leaving Kevin alone for the time being, and giving the Undine enough of a break to gather his strength, magical and mundane; to get better at this shared sport of theirs.

All Andrew knew was that one day, Riko had gone too far—there’d been a race and then a fight of some sort and he’d damaged Kevin physically to get at the core of his power somehow, to make sure he could never swim again. Kevin had managed to flee Evermore through some unknown means with a mangled arm, terrified, drawn to Wymack because his magic—Kayleigh’s magic—called out to him. To his human father.

That was another secret the rest of the team didn’t know anything about, as far as Andrew was aware. Not even Wymack knew what made Kevin run for him, other than the acquaintance everyone knew of between Wymack and Kayleigh, before Kevin was born. He suspected Renee knew, but Renee had her own way of finding things out that had nothing to do with Kevin spilling his secrets willingly, so Andrew didn’t care if she knew. 

He’d asked, only once, if Kevin was going to tell Wymack what the man was to him, but Kevin had spewed something about it being too dangerous for Wymack to know. Andrew assumed Kevin actually meant he was too afraid to admit the truth, in case Wymack got mad at him or made him leave. He didn’t think that would ever happen—Wymack was a sucker for lost causes—but Kevin’s fear dictated most things in his life.

Kevin had told Andrew all of this one day when he was drunk and blubbering, so Andrew is far more aware of this shit than he ever wanted to be. He hadn’t cared about Kevin’s past or what made him the way he was, only that Kevin was safe now and remained so under Andrew’s watch. But Kevin couldn’t hold his tongue when he was drunk, and he was so often drunk these days when he wasn’t in the water.

He’d never wanted to be pushed into the middle of some sort of…war for magical supremacy, or whatever the Moriyamas were doing. He agreed to protect Kevin because of their deal, because of what Kevin had offered him, but Andrew didn’t _like_ the idea of it.

But he’d never wanted to know about the hundreds of different kinds of fae that he had to look out for now, or the dangers that could come at him and those he promised to protect from more than one world. Life was already terrible enough thinking he only had to be wary of one kind of monster.

He didn’t want to think about the world outside of the one he already knew so well. Andrew had never been treated well by humanity and he doubted it’d be any better with the fae. He wanted nothing to do with them outside of Kevin, but the Undine made that hard.

On the whole, the Foxes didn’t talk about what Kevin was. Unless they were talking to each other about it or to Kevin whenever Andrew wasn’t around, which was almost never when it came to Kevin, then they didn’t seem to care. They treated it like Dan’s stripping, or Matt’s drug use—something in their past that made up a big part of who they were now, but wasn’t relevant anymore. 

(Andrew had used purely human methods to deal with Matt’s problem when he met him; he hadn’t needed Kevin’s magic come-down to get Matt to deal with his shit in a way that would stick. Magic, as far as Andrew was concerned, could shove it. Andrew had lived his life without it, and he would continue to do so once Kevin was back out of his life. He didn’t need to rely on it for the things he needed to do.)

He wasn’t sure if they knew about Renee or not, but that wasn’t Andrew’s secret to spill either. She wasn’t anything water-related, so there was really no reason why anyone would think she was cheating the way he knew Gordon still thought of Kevin. It was enough that she sparred with him outside of training and kept him on his toes. She was the most tolerable one on the team and if that meant he had to keep what he knew under-wraps to keep her around, he would continue to do so.

That all was enough supernatural bullshit for Andrew to handle. He doesn’t need some new kid who feels strange and dangerous messing with their routine. No matter how much Kevin wants Neil Josten to sign with the Foxes and swim with them, Andrew has zero desire for it.

He’d been attractive enough, in an underfed jittery kind of way, but Josten had reminded Andrew much more of a prey animal than a potential partner. Andrew wasn’t interested in that. He could imagine Josten stretched out in bed, but that was as far as Andrew ever wanted to think about the other swimmer, and even that was something he didn’t necessarily want to unpack and think about outside of the privacy of his bunk or in the shower stalls by himself.

“Why does the prospect of Neil joining the team bother you so much?” Betsy asks during their next session when there’s a lull in their conversation. There’s a new shiny bauble on her desk from the Phoenix airport waiting for her to rearrange the shelves.

Andrew looks at the ceiling and wonders who’s been talking to her. He certainly hasn’t said anything on the topic of the scared bunny who he doubted would show up for his appointed start date in a few days. It had been weeks since Wymack had told Kevin—and by extension, him—that Josten had agreed and signed the contract and faxed it over. The rabbit was due at the airport soon to start bothering them for summer practice, but Andrew still doubted he’d actually show up.

If he had to guess, it was probably Nicky. Nicky loves Betsy and talks to her weekly, even though he isn’t required by court order to. Andrew thinks Nicky is looking for another mother figure to replace the piece of shit one he left behind, but Andrew doesn’t see the point in bringing it up with his cousin. It would only hurt him for no reason.

“I don’t know,” he says after five minutes of silence have passed between them. “That’s the problem.”

Betsy hums and writes something in her notes. Trust issues or issues opening up to others. Maybe something about his antisocial personality behavior. Andrew could try to read her writing upside down, knows the way her hands move after seeing her every week for over a year, but there’s really no reason to. Andrew knows what it says in his files. He’s read them before.

She doesn’t get what the problem is, because she isn’t in tune with the world the way Andrew is. She doesn’t understand that when he gets an itch on the back of his neck because of someone, it’s because they aren’t right. Either there’s something wrong with them or they just aren’t _human_. How could he go about explaining to his psychiatrist that he’s worried the new kid is some new flavor of supernatural that Andrew will have to deal with? He doesn’t want to be committed again.

He’s supposed to pick Kevin up after his session and drive them both down to the stadium. Kevin always gets antsy if he doesn’t see water at least once a day. It was summer and they didn’t _have_ to practice, but where Kevin went, Andrew was sure to follow. His appointment with Betsy had come first, of course, but he knew Kevin was waiting impatiently in the car and counting down every minute.

“I don’t think he’s trustworthy,” he says finally. Betsy gestures for him to go on. “There’s something about him. Some look in his eyes that’s too familiar. He’s hiding something.” Neil Josten is probably hiding a lot of things, but Betsy knows how Andrew feels about liars, so it’s a safe thing to say.

“We all hide some things,” Betsy tells him gently. “It’s human nature to keep the softest parts of ourselves safe from harm.”

That’s the problem though, isn’t it? Human nature. Andrew isn’t sure if Neil even _is_ human. He hopes he never finds out.


End file.
